Accenture’s latest report analyzes effective social media tactics to help consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies drive higher consumer engagement. We studied 80 CPG brands (Coke, Nestle, Unilever, P&G, Tesco, Amazon, Walmart) from the athletics, alcoholic beverages, fashion and luxury, food and non-alcoholic beverages, personal care, and snacks and chocolates categories. The selection of brands represent a sampling of brands that are very active in social media, those that are ramping up their social activity, and those that are not yet active.We also monitored the five retailers that are most active in social media. Overview: Many companies’ social media efforts are not designed to increase sales or even facilitate socializing. Fan pages and brand communities many times look more like broadcast vehicles than interactive social vehicles. The bottom line is that companies may need to revisit their social media strategy to generate engagement and move from pure social listening capability to derive actionable insights across departments.

1. 55 million conversations
over 55 days
A research report analyzing effective social media
tactics for consumer engagement
Focus industtry: Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)

2. 2
Many companies’ social media efforts are not designed to actually
increase sales, or even to facilitate socializing. Fan pages and brand
communities many times look more like broadcast vehicles than
interactive social vehicles. The bottom line is that companies may
need to revisit their social media strategy to refocus investments
to generate engagement and move from pure social listening
capability to derive actionable insights across departments.
Engagement takes many forms. Co-creation contests and games
on social media engage consumers and give them a vehicle to
voice their opinions. From voting on new product flavors to
participating in video competitions in support of the brand, to
offline scavenger hunts launched online, social media has a
distinctive ability to generate engagement. Ideally companies
could create one-to-one relationships with consumers or one-
to-many interactions among consumers over a shared pursuit.
Either way, social media can increase the flow of conversation
and consumers’ engagement with the brand and with each other,
making it a uniquely cost effective way to generate input and
influence new products, offers and marketing approaches.

3. 3
Study Methodology
With a growing interest from consumer
packaged goods (CPG) companies and
retailers keen to listen to and engage with
consumers through social media, Accenture
analyzed the types of conversations
initiated throughout social communities
and consumers’ response to each.
This report examined:
1. The social media activities of top CPG
brands across the globe to see how
effectively they engage with consumers
2. The social media activities of the most
active retailers in the social realm to see
how effectively they engage with consumers
3. What CPG companies and retailers
can learn from each other about
social media effectiveness based
on their engagement scores
4. Different social media tactics (ads, surveys,
contests, discounts) and message tone, style
and length to gage effectiveness of each
Brands monitored:
We studied 80 CPG brands from the athletics,
alcoholic beverages, fashion and luxury, food
and non-alcoholic beverages, personal care,
and snacks and chocolates categories. The
selection of brands represent a sampling of
brands that are very active in social media,
those that are ramping up their social
activity, and those that are not yet active.
We also monitored the five retailers that
are most active in social media. See Figure
1 for a sampling of the CPG brands and
all five retailers we monitored. Of the CPG
brands we studied, 10 of them consume
27 percent of the 55 million conversations
(see Figure 2). And the retail brands we
examined consume 40 percent of the 55
million conversations (see Figure 3).
Period of analysis:
The peak 55 days of the 2012-2013 holiday
season, including pre-holiday (November
15 – December 24, 2012), during the holiday
(December 24-25, 2012), and post-holiday
(December 26, 2012 – January 7, 2013).
Research group:
The research and analysis was conducted by
Accenture Interactive, the Accenture Customer
Innovation Network, the Accenture Technology
Labs and the Social Media Lab within
Accenture’s India Delivery Center network.
Research approach:
The research and digital consulting team
monitored businessto-consumer social
media conversations, including messages
posted by the brands and the consumers’
response. We also utilised Accenture’s
proprietary asset SNAP for indepth
insight driven analysis coupled with
Radian6 social listening and Clarabridge’s
sentiment and text analytics software.
Figure 1: Sampling of brand activity throughout the study period. Accenture analysis
The spikes represent the communication peaks for the brands overall during the analysis period. The
placement of the brands on this chart is random and not associated to the time period.
15th Nov
2012
Pre-Holiday During the Holiday Period
7th Jan
2013
Gucci, Nespresso, Magnum, Louis Vuitton, Purina,
KitKat, Nivea, Heineken, Nike, Redbull, Dove, Dior, Bacardi,
Adidas, Nutella, Corona, Oreo, Lynx, Pringles, Budweiser,
Stella Artois, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Sprite
ConsumerEngagement
HIGH
LOW
Post-Holiday
CPG
Amazon, Macy’s, Walmart, Asda, Tesco
Retailer
55m POSTS, 85 BRAND PAGES, 300K COMMENTS, 12m LIKES, 748K SHARES

4. 4
Figure 3:
The five most
active retailers in social
media consumed
of the 55 million conversations
during the study
40%
Amazon
Walmart
Macy’s
Tesco
Asda
The top 10 global
CPG brands consumed
more than
of the 55m social conversations
27%
Nike
Gucci
Pepsi
Oreo
Nutella
Adidas
Ciroc
Dior
Skittles
Coca Cola
Figure 2:
27%
73%
60%
40%

5. 5
Accenture analysis included “paid” media – posts promoted/
sponsored by brands including adverts on social media, “owned”
media – posts pushed out by the brand – and “earned” media – posts
about the brand from consumers or partners. The “total response”
for the social media posts we analyzed was calculated by adding the
number of “likes” garnered from consumers, the number of times
consumers shared the post with their network, and the number
of comments per post. In the case of social media ad campaigns,
when brands ran multiple waves of an ad, the total engagement
score is the summation of the “total response” for all waves.
The engagement scores were calculated using the following formula:
Measuring Beyond “Likes”:
The True Engagement Score on
Paid, Owned and Earned Media
All CPG and Retailer -
Word Cloud
white
oreo
adidas
skittles
money
jordan
michael
makes
annually
revirews
nikegucci
factory
workers
amazon
pepsi
nutella
running
coke
run
looking
change
buy back
bull
comes
best
red
think
program
nike+
green
ciroe
deals
malaysia
love
combined
visitors
fees
affiliates
walmart
tesco
macy
asda
services
removal
subject
sites
participants
trademarks
provided
designed
customers
earn
appears
interesting think
information
read
list
The engagement score is an important metric for brands to track.
The more consumers that engage with your brand, the more insights
you can collect about them and their expectations. It’s about
listening and then responding to what you hear – aligning to what
target consumers expect. By changing marketing messages and
offers based on those insights, you can drive increased sales and
loyalty. When a consumer becomes a fan of your brand and “likes”,
comments on, or shares one of your brand posts, his or her entire
social network is exposed to the information. If 10 fans engage
with a post, that post can potentially reach 1,300 consumers.*
The size of the brand name
represents the volume of
social conversations during
the study period.
Figure 4: Volume of brand conversations, according to Accenture analysis
*Based on the average friend count on Facebook, which is 190.

6. 6
In the CPG industry, the traditional approach of relying heavily on
retailer data or surveys to understand consumers’ expectations is
not the only or most effective option anymore. CPG companies
should add social media insights to that point-of-sale (POS) data for
a more complete view of target consumers. Social media enables
CPG companies to not only learn more about consumers, but
also engage directly with them and have an ongoing dialogue.
It should come as no surprise that our study found CPG brands like
adidas, Coca-Cola, Ferrero, Kit Kat, Nike, Oreo, Pringles and Red
Bull to be among the 50 most active social media brands in the
world during the holidays. Retailers, such as Amazon, Walmart,
Target and Macy’s, also made it on this top 50 list. But our study
found that the different brands are at varying levels of maturity in
terms of having a two-way dialogue with consumers. The specific
social media tactics the brands implemented to engage with
consumers remains the key factor driving their engagement scores.
The Research Findings
Finding #1
Consumers engaged more actively with
social media tactics focused on one CPG
brand versus retailer posts focused on
multiple CPG brands offered in their stores.
Finding #2
Campaigns focused on social and charitable
causes created more conversation around
the holidays compared to posts offering
a discount, requesting a survey response
or making a general statement.
Finding #3
Working the holiday theme into brand posts
proved effective. Holiday- or Santa-themed
posts, such as those implemented by Macy’s,
received a higher response than posts on
other topics during the holiday season.
Finding #4
Campaigns including multimedia content
– such as high-quality video, or clear
product images like those posted by
Dove hair oil advertisements – were more
effective than simple text or photo posts.
Finding #5
An effective way to engage consumers is
to make them a part of the social media
campaign, such as idea-or story-sharing and
innovation sourcing. For example, birthday
celebration ads from Oreo, Christmas
tree sharing by Monster Energy fans,
and a call to design the future Heineken
bottle were effective campaigns.
Finding #6
Do not implement a discount campaign
without being 100 percent ready to deliver
on the promise. Address supply chain
fulfillment issues up front and describe in
detail the process for redeeming vouchers.
For example, a few CPG companies offered
discounts without confirming voucher
fulfillment processes in all local participating
stores. And some did not clearly articulate
which stores were participating in the
program. This resulted in a lot of noise
throughout the social communities where
consumers complained about stores refusing
the vouchers, and therefore, doubted
the credibility of the brand’s offer.
Finding #7
If you run a social media campaign that
could go viral, ensure you have a Social
Media Management System in place to
deal with the amount of conversations that
could occur. For example, several consumers
complained on brand pages, stating that
their queries were going unanswered despite
repeated attempts. These queries ranged
from campaign questions to dissatisfaction
with in-store services during the holidays.
Finding #8
For CPG brands, ensure you have a digital
strategy that includes ideas for capitalizing
on “earned media” resulting from your retail
partners’ social media campaigns. Traditionally
CPG brands make significant investments
in trade promotions to influence good
product positioning in retail stores. But in a
multi-channel world, that approach should
evolve to also include tactics focused on
how retail partners promote your products
on their websites and social media pages.
Finding #9
Incomplete campaigns or unplanned tactics
are not effective. Engage with people when
you have a clear strategy, message and goals.
In our study, irrelevant messages from a few
brands resulted in zero “likes” or shared posts,
therefore, wasting that opportunity to turn
a social media post reader into a customer
or fan. Throughout the study, all brands we
monitored saw an uplift in their social media
fan base . A few brands saw some existing
fans being replaced with new fans. This
poses a question for brands to answer when
they formulate their social media campaign
strategy. Do you spend time on new customer
acquisition, or focus on retaining a loyal base?
Finding #10
Be simple, genuine and relevant with social
media posts. A concise, simple post, such as
“What’s your snow day song?” by Smirnoff had
2,064 replies and generated more engagement
than a discount or coupon post, which is only
applicable for some products and in some
stores. Discounts and coupons could be more
effective through more targeted channels
like email or direct mail, where you can
deliver them to target audience segments for
particular products in particular regions. Use
of the advanced personalized offers engine
on social media fanbook/Twitter pages is
another option to drive targeted campaigns
to different audience segments. Social media
posts potentially reach a very broad audience,
so brands should use messages and tactics
that are effective for one-to-many marketing.

7. The Combined Group
of Five Retailers
We Studied
The Combined Group
of 80 CPG Brands
We Studied
All CPG – Total Volume: ~24 600 000 posts
All Retailers – Total Volume: ~30 900 000 posts
Date: November 2012 - January 2013
Source: Accenture Analysis
55% 45%
Despite the much smaller number of retailers in our study base, the
total group of retailers monitored garnered a larger share of voice
during the holiday season than the total group of CPG companies we
monitored. However, a majority of the retail posts were pushed out by
those retailers, as opposed to being received by consumers. A larger
portion of CPG posts came from consumers versus the CPG brands
themselves.
Figure 5: Retail versus CPG brand share of voice, according to Accenture analysis
7

8. Competition
Product
Promotion
Holiday
Themes
Generic
Information
Event
Promotion
Gift
Survey
Discount
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
CPG Alcohol Beverages
CPG Snacks and
Chocolates
CPG Food and Non
Alcoholic Beverages
Retailers
CPG Fashion and Luxury
CPG Sports
CPG Personal Care
Figure 6: Brand sector engagement scores by social
media tactic, according to Accenture analysis
Content Strategies Implemented by
Global Brands During Peak Holiday Season
Based on the engagement score, we have divided social media
tactics we studied into “successful” and “less successful”.
Successful engagement:
Holiday-themed posts
Product promotions
Contests
Less successful:
Generic Information
Event promotions
Discount/Vouchers
Surveys
See Figure 6.
Asking consumers to participate in contests during the holiday season
was a clear winner for engaging them in dialogue. On a scale of 0 to
3.5, the overall score for consumer participation in contests during the
study is 3.027. The alcoholic beverages sector used contests effectively.
These brands not only ran more contests compared to the other sectors,
but they also garnered a higher engagement score from their contests
compared to contests run by other CPG sectors or retailers. The contest
posts from the alcoholic beverages sector averaged 2.32. For other
CPG sectors the cumulative score was 0.1, and for retail it was 0.41.
There was a significant increase in “discount” related social media
ads during the holiday season, especially from the retail brands
we monitored. Looking across the study period, the brands posted
a similar percent of “discount” related ads throughout the pre-
, during- and post-holiday periods. However, offering a discount
during the holiday season performed relatively low in terms of
engaging consumers with brands. This could be because consumers
have a need to purchase gifts during the holidays regardless of
the price. Their purchase decisions are not driven by a discount
alone, but rather by the wish list of the intended recipient.
Requesting a survey response during the holiday season also
proved ineffective for engaging consumers. This could be due
to the limited time consumers have during the holidays, as
they fill their free time with gift shopping and parties.
Posts containing generic information did not perform well in
consumer engagement scores. These generic posts were more like
a broadcast of information rather than a specific intent to engage
consumers. Examples of these posts during the study period include:
• “Announcing the new ambassador of Moët & Chandon!”
• Pamper’s “Question of the Week”
• “LYNX now bumped to third! Where are you on the leaderboard?”
8
Cumulative Engagement Score by Sector
SocialMediaTactic

9. 9
Figure 8: Peaks and valleys of consumer engagement by brand during the study,
according to Accenture analysis
Figure 7: Pre-, during-and post-holiday: Effectiveness of tactics by time period,
according to Accenture analysis
Pre Holiday Holiday Post Holiday
0.45
037
0.36
0.38
0.26
0.27
0.21
0.25
0.25
0.19
0.12
0.18
0.07
0.11
0.08
0.11
0.34
0.46
0.23
0.20
0.30
0.18
0.09
0.12
Study Time Period
EngagementScorebySocialMediaTactic
100000
0
60000
50000
40000
30000
20000
10000
70000
80000
90000
Adidas
Ciroc
Coca Cola
Dior
Gucci
Nike
Nutella
Oreo
Pepsi
Skittles
ConsumerEngagement/Posts
Pre-Holiday During the Holiday Post-Holiday
This chart represents the top 10 most active social media brands based on consumer interaction during
the analysis period. The 2 significantly more active brands – Nike and Gucci (both fashion apparel) - have
engaged during the analysis period almost the same number of fans as the remaining 8 brands overall.
The top 10 CPG brands on social media belong to the fashion apparel, beverage and food industries.
Holiday theme campaigns
Competition
Product promo
Generic info
Gift
Event promo
Discount
Survey

10. Has Social Media Shifted the Power Away from
the Traditional Mindset that Retailers own the
Consumer Relationship?
Social media does provide CPG companies
with more direct access to consumers,
and consumers want to engage more
with the brands they want to purchase,
wear or consume, more than they want to
engage with the retailers they purchase
those brands from. This could be because
engaging with CPG brands is going direct
to the source of the product, as opposed
to engaging multiple times with retailers
that sell many products and brands.
More Research Findings
1. The average Engagement score for the
CPG brands we monitored is higher than the
retail brands. This holds true throughout the
pre-holiday, holiday and post-holiday periods
2. The holiday-themed posts by CPG
companies and retailers received
positive response from consumers.
3. Although product promotion is one
of the most frequent social media tactics
implemented by both CPG and retail brands,
it has proven more successful for CPG
brands (CPG average engagement score is
0.33 versus retail average engagement score
of 0.11). This is likely because CPG product
promotion campaigns focus on a specific
branded product or line, whereas a retailer
has many different product lines, products
and brands to promote. The lack of focus
does not draw as much consumer attention.
4. For retail brands, we observed that
only a few received a considerable amount
of response to their posts. There are a
number of retail brands for which the
response was low. The gap between the
top- and bottom-performers (in terms of
engagement score) is significant. But for
CPG brands, the majority of the brands
received consumer response to their posts,
and the gap between the top- and bottom-
performers is narrow compared to retail.
This particular observation was noted for all
three periods within the study. Therefore, it
seems CPG brands’ social media strategies
work well in terms of building brand loyalty
for a particular named-brand, as opposed to
retailers’ multi-brand promotion strategy.
5. Before Thanks Giving, consumers
primarily shared information about what
they want to buy on- or off-line, as well as
advertising for the products they prefer.
6. After Black Friday, consumers
appeared to post messages about their
shopping trips, the best deals they scored
and Christmas gifts they received or
purchased. The most discussed product
types included iPhones, iPads and DVDs.
7. Holiday Event terms such as “Black Friday”
and “Christmas” were among the top brand
associations during the event and pre-event
periods, and they persisted afterwards.
During the event, the hashtag #blackfriday
received more than 40,000 mentions.
10
According to the Accenture research, the
answer is YES.

11. 11
Figure 9: According to Accenture analysis, consumers engaged more actively with CPG
brands than the retailers we studied during the study period
CPG companies are increasingly mastering the Know-Your-Customer tricks
better through social media as compared to retailers tactics.
Pre-Holiday
During the Holiday
Post Holiday
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
CPG
Retail
Consumer Engagement
Despite retailers pushing out lots of content during the holiday season, consumers engaged more actively with CPG brands overall.
EngagementScore/Posts
Beverage Brands
All Retailers
Fashion Brands
Food Brands
100000
0
60000
50000
40000
30000
20000
10000
70000
80000
90000
Figure 10: Engagement score by industry and time period within the study,
according to Accenture analysis
Retailers were highly active during the, Pre-holiday Holiday and Post-holiday periods due to
the product promotion activities. The highest peak refers to Black Friday.

12. Remember, the holiday season has three social media traffic
“peaks”. Plan and execute a clear strategy to capitalize on
the different tactics and message styles that work best in
each of the pre-, during- and post-holiday periods. And
segment your audience, enabling you to implement the most
effective types of tactics for each. Launch the campaign in
multiple waves by holiday period to keep the fans engaged.
For example, Smirnoff, Pepsi and Macy’s did a good job
with this. Some brands, such as Budweiser, capitalized on
the entire holiday season by launching multiple campaign
waves and keeping fans engaged throughout the 55 days.
Running campaigns with a holiday theme is a clear winner.
Nearly every social media campaign we monitored before
Christmas that included a Santa or Christmas Tree theme
received a positive response. Brands failing to capitalize
on the sentiment value of holiday themes failed to engage
effectively with consumers. For example, Macy’s multiple
Santa-themed ads received a tremendous consumer response
versus other retail brands that did not leverage “Santa”.
When we say “ENGAGE” we mean a two-way dialogue. Brands
should not just push out content. Pull content from consumers
as well. Make your brand fans feel like they are part of the
overall brand voice and crowd-source ideas from them to help
improve new product innovation. Campaigns like Lacoste’s
“The Polo of the Future” and Heineken’s call to help design its
future bottle received a massive response because they gave
consumers the opportunity to be part of the brand experience.
Campaigns that acknowledge the fans, such as the birthday
celebration ads from Oreo or Christmas Tree sharing by Monster
Energy fans, also received high consumer engagement scores.
Use social media as part of your multi-channel marketing strategy.
Develop mobile applications (apps) that consumers will use
because they serve a need, provide more access or convenience,
or save time. Mobile apps can help connect consumers to their
social network. But apps that are self-serving for the brands
have not proven effective. Through this research, we saw more
engagement with brands whose social media campaigns directed
consumers to download apps that did not necessarily promote
the brands’ products, but helped consumers achieve personal
goals, like sending holiday greetings, increasing fitness or making
a New Year’s resolution. Heineken capitalized on a new mobile
app titled “New Year’s Cheers”. It enabled consumers to send New
Year’s wishes in a different way and received a positive response.
Retain consumer interest with a variety of relevant content.
Providing quality multi-media content, like video and high-
quality images, increased consumer engagement in campaigns
(e.g. Dove hair oil ad and Nespresso relevant content sharing).
Consumers responded more to contests that offered exciting
prizes. Smirnoff offered an iPad, for example, and this
performed better than ads offering a trip with a friend.
Work to engage with target audiences, not everyone. Know your
brand essence. Do not waste time during the peak holiday season
by experimenting on different types of tactics that your fans
don’t associate with your brand. For example, event promotion
campaigns were implemented by many brands we studied, but they
proved successful only for fashion brands. And, though social cause
or charitable campaigns generated a lot of consumer engagement,
they were effective only with local themes, such as with retailers.
For example, Macy’s “Believe” campaign was effective.
12
Pre-, During- and Post-Holiday:
What Works in Social Media Strategy?
The Do’s The Don’ts
Just because social media is considered “free advertising”,
don’t over-do it. In the already cluttered social media
realm, avoid broadcasting generic information and
requesting survey responses. These tactics scored low
for consumer engagement unless they were requests
from the brands for feedback on customer service.
Conduct surveys. Out of the various surveys conducted by
CPG and retail brands during the study period, 80 percent of
them failed to engage consumers, and 20 percent received
less response than other social media tactics. Survey content
takes time to respond to and is not motivating enough for
consumers to click “like” or share with their network.
Broadcast generic information. Social media content
should engage consumers in an ongoing two-way
dialogue. Pushing generic information out through
social communities is usually self-serving for the brand.
Examples we found of generic information include:
• “Bulgari joins Giorgio Armani, Diane Vreeland,
and other legends as the latest recipient of
the Rodeo Drive Walk of Style Award”
• “Ever wonder what your friends are eating? Knorr
is tracking the world’s flavors so you can see
flavors from around the globe, then share your
own personal flavor with our new FREE app”
Run a contest without a compelling prize. While contests
proved overall to be an effective tactic, they failed to
garner participation if a clear and compelling prize was not
articulated. For example, this contest: “Continue the song
– There may be spot prizes for our favorite lines”, did not
perform well in respect to engagment score. Another example
was a Diet Pepsi ad: “Daily fixes to be won.” Contests with
a low probability of winning did not perform well either.
Run an event promotion campaign that is merely informative,
rather than trying to drive consumer attendance. Even event
promotions need to prompt a consumer response in social
media. But many of the posts we saw in this category were
just informative. For example, Moët Chandon ran a campaign
promoting the “Moët British Independent Film Awards.” Social
media content from Active asked “Guess who joined Jamie Lee
Curtis on the set of our new Activia commercial?” Another
event promotion featured “Grey Goose Winter Ball night,
charity event organized for the Elton John Aids Foundation.”
Offer discounts through social media. The “discount” category
failed to draw consumer response. For example the campaign
offering to “Save up to $2.50 on Pampers products,” was not
visibly effective. Some of the participating stores refused
to accept the coupons because they didn’t have the usual
barcode on them. Moreover, coupons are only valid for a
particular type of product. The audience in social media is
too broad for the discount tactic to be effective. During
the study, we found a number of comments related to
issues faced by consumers trying to use these coupons.

13. 13
Three steps to high performance
Our findings and the corresponding
recommendations are a starting point for
most CPG brands. Yet in our experience the
difficulty resides in executing recommendations.
Turning tactical engagement do’s and don’ts
into business results is not as simple as
scheduling five posts per recommendation
per week and responding to comments; it
requires a principled approach and a set of
sophisticated tools. Our Interactive R&D
Center researchers have surfaced three key
principles to apply those recommendations
and to take them to the next level.
First, become relevant thanks
to deeper consumer insight
Accenture applies advanced analytics to a
combination of Social profile, behavioral and
CRM data (for known consumers) in order to
create a much broader, accurate and timely
view of the consumer and influencer networks.
With this view, one can apply interest-
graph and intent analysis to determine
content, incentives and calls to actions
that will resonate with a target audience,
directly and indirectly via word-of-mouth.
Going a step further from punctual
analysis, our researchers have created
models that tap into the constant stream
of conversation to construct dynamic
perception maps around a particular brand
or product. Those maps can help spot
sudden changes in attitude, associated
concepts or emotions, perceived attributes,
moments and places of consumption or
even preference for competing products.
Secondly, bring science to the
art of consumer engagement
Engagement planning and execution
clearly remains a creative process, yet
it now holds the potential to be greatly
amplified by data-driven approaches
at every stage from campaign ideation
to engagement measurement.
The availability of historical engagement
data for a given brand (and sometimes
most of its peers), enables marketers to
rapidly acquire the knowledge that would
otherwise require months of trial-and-error
experiments. To automate this process,
Accenture uses proprietary big data
machine-learning that dynamically creates
engagement recommendations for target
audiences - such as the best time of the day
to engage, best media, best tone or best topic.
Furthermore, the availability of near-real-
time engagement data now allows marketers
to better focus their efforts, iterate faster
and systematically amplify earned media.
Using Natural Language Processing and
Correlative Analytics techniques, we can
help marketers and social care agents to
maximize their efforts and to identify low-
hanging fruits correlated to key business
events (e.g. patterns indicating opportunities
for up-sell or word or mouth activation).
Third, go from engagement
optimization to ROI optimization
In this step, one needs to move a step
further in the marketing funnel, beyond
engagement, using the same data-driven
mindset and techniques to optimize business
outcomes. In practice, this means taking into
account not only engagement scores, but
also core KPIs tied to online sales, consumer
lifetime value, consumer satisfaction
and so forth. Conversions influenced by
social engagement then become an input
to the data-driven model that we use to
refine recommendation, constantly learn
to be more relevant and rapidly iterate
to maximize bottom-line results.

14. 14
This Research Was Conducted By...
Shaping the Future of High Performance
in Consumer Goods Our Consumer Goods
industry professionals around the world
work with companies in the food, beverages,
agribusiness, home and personal care,
consumer health, fashion and luxury,
and tobacco segments. With decades of
experience working with the world’s most
successful companies, we help clients
manage scale and complexity, transform
global operating models to effectively serve
emerging and mature markets, and drive
growth through evolving market conditions.
We provide services as well as individual
consulting, technology and outsourcing
projects in the areas of Sales and Marketing,
Supply Chain, ERP Global Operations and
Integrated Business Services. To read our
proprietary industry research and insights,
visit www.accenture.com/ConsumerGoods.
Accenture Interactive offers a comprehensive
suite of contemporary marketing
services, software and assets to CMOs
and brand leaders to drive up marketing
performance, drive down the cost per
interaction and create relevant consumer
experiences on a massive scale.
Thanks to over 1,500 professionals and
global reach, Accenture Interactive delivers
results at scale using the right blend of
local, offshore and near shore capabilities.
Our Centers of Excellence located in India
(Gurgaon and Hyderabad); Athens, Greece;
Shanghai and the Philippines offer over
500 dedicated professionals who provide:
• Enhanced offshore delivery capabilities
• Dedicated asset development
• Product innovation
• Rapid deployment of global digital platforms
Among the most representative results,
Accenture Interactive helped clients
capture over $70 billion in annual media
and marketing spend, often optimizing
over $1 billion for individual clients.
The Accenture Customer Innovation Network
(ACIN) is an interconnected global system
of centers, labs and specialists. The heart of
the ACIN is three unique facilities located in
Chicago, Milan and Sao Paulo, that is bolstered
by partners and centers of excellence spanning
the globe. The goal of the ACIN is to assist
CPG and retail clients in discovering the most
effective and innovative solutions to propel
business to the forefront of the industry,
through an interactive workshop experience
with access to research, demonstrations,
global insights and industry expertise.
Every year, the ACIN runs over 250 C-level
workshops with CPG and retail clients.
The Social Media India Delivery Center Lab is
an offshore lab providing advanced services in
social products evaluation for social listening,
text analytics and collaboration. The lab
provides action-oriented insights based on
the social image of the client’s brand versus
it’s competition. Reports are segmented
in multiple dimensions like demographics,
sentiments, volume or languages in order to
develop the appropriate engagement model.
The majority of the top leaders and niche
players in the social media products landscape
are Accenture’s premium partners. To date,
the lab has served more than 75 social media
clients in the automotive, banking, telecom,
insurance, energy, CPG and retail industries.
The Accenture Technology Labs is guided
by Accenture’s Annual Technology Vision.
The Labs’ professionals work across our five
centers (Silicon Valley, Washington D.C.,
Sophia Antipolis, Bangalore and Beijing),
within our eight R&D groups, and with leading
technology partners to form a network of
dynamic innovation for Accenture and our
clients. We are ambitiously working to extend
our 20-year track record of envisioning the
future, inventing, and then delivering the
next wave of cutting-edge business solutions.
We have more than $230 million direct
sales and $300 million influenced sales.
The Tech Labs hosted more than 390 client
workshops across industries globally in 2012.
Project Lead:
Mac Karlekar
Multichannel Digital Lead, EALA
++44 (0) 7803 587 853
mac.karlekar@accenture.com
Project Sponsors:
Koen Van Bockstaele
Anatoly Roytman
Alessandro Diana
Matt DeNicola
Bernie Segal
Marco Triozzi
Christine Connor
Project Contributors:
Alexandre Naressi
Pranayesh Singh
Davide Contrini
Christian Souche
Jason Breed
Minarini Caterina
Medhi Hillool
Alexeeva Ksenia
Richard Murton

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16. Copyright © 2013 Accenture
All rights reserved.
Accenture, its logo, and
High Performance Delivered
are trademarks of Accenture.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management
consulting, technology services and
outsourcing company, with approximately
261,000 people serving clients in more than
120 countries. Combining unparalleled
experience, comprehensive capabilities
across all industries and business functions,
and extensive research on the world’s
most successful companies, Accenture
collaborates with clients to help them
become high-performance businesses and
governments. The company generated
net revenues of US$27.9 billion for the
fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2012. Its
home page is www.accenture.com.